5 10 41 https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/6af3d039c3dd6415ff12b54f294ae72e.pdf 22a2896fb5d493fe4e9f1ea781c593bc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Trade Unions and Architecture Description An account of the resource Themes included action on asbestos and Health & Safety, and involvement with Direct Labour Organisations and Building Unions. Following comparative research of possible options, NAM encouraged unionisation of building design staffs within the private sector, negotiating the establishment of a dedicated section within TASS. Though recruitment was modest the campaign identified many of the issues around terms of employment and industrial relations that underpin the processes of architectural production. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Highrise Industrialised Housing Subject The topic of the resource Critique - 7 x A4 typewritten pages Description An account of the resource ¥ - ST TIS Highrise Industrialised Housing. written by members of the yj Building Design Staff In Britain during the period 1964 - 1970 there was a remarkable boom in construction of high- rise industrialised housing. At the height of this boom over 40% of new local authority housing was being built using these methods. Although the period was very short, during it the skylines of most cities and towns in Britain were transformed, and a legacy was left which is now distinctive for another reason — massive repair bills. The scramble of the boom years with the attempt by the Labour government to achieve 500,000 new housing units per year was a gold mine to the building companies. Most of them developed or bought a system yntil there were more than 400 systems on the market; now there are only abot 70 in common use. HOW DID IT HAPPEN? The Tory government of the 1950s was concernetdo promote slum clearance, prevent urban Sprawl, retain agricultural land and to preserve the amenities of the countryside; these concerns were embodied in the 1953 jhite Paper which, whilst urging slum clearance and organising Green Belts around the Major cities, also encouraged Local Authorites to build at higher densities than before. After the war Local Authorities had concentrated on three-bed somes and flats, usually no higher than 3 - 4 storeys, but. with the creation of Green Belts expansion was restricted and housing land was limited. Central Government pressed Local Authorities in urban areas to build to higher densities, and produced 'Flats and Homes 1958' which they described as 'a study of design and economy in high density housing". Ministerial circulars, design manuals, bulletins, speeches and informal consultations with Local Authorities pressed the density policy home. The Government advised that above 90 persons per acre tall blocks would be better but were not completely necessary until a density of 140 persons per acre was reached. The policy was put into effect by a subsidy to Local Authorities for high-rise flats; each floor higher than six earned a subsidy. So, despite counter-objections, high-rise housing became a key component of Government housing policy, and the bandwagon began to roll Supported by technical advice which justified the idea. fhe NBA (National Building Agency) was set up in 1964 to examine the question and provide technical information and to Study industrialised building methods. Their backing of the highrise London branch of AUEW-TASS. industrialised solution and the support of the Government gave great weight to the idea, and there were very few Local Authorities that could resist the pressure. JUSTIFICATIONS FOR INDUSTRIALISED SYSTEMS. Many reasons were put forward as to why industrialised syatems should be used: 1. There was a large and urgent housing programme, and homes had to be provided quichly and cheaply. 2. Costs would decrease by standardising components and by mechanising the building process. The argument was that factories would be built with controlled conditions in which to make the components, which would then be taken by lorry to the sites and erected by skilled assemblers. This would mean that there would be less reliance on traditional labour crafts, less industrial conflict and therefore a smoother building operation. Cost would be further reduced by repeating standardised, units, and often an analogy with car assembly lines was used to illustrate this point. By ensuring a continuous demand for a particular system the high cost of capitalising such a project would be recouped; it was the possibility of high profits that induced building contractors was the main material used - about 95% in 1963 and 70% in 1970 for example. Many of the systems were imported from abroad. 3. Closer co-operation within the design team would result, and time would be saved by repeating types and the elimination of the one-off job. Had the high-riee experiment succeeded it might well have had major implications for the employment of designers. During the highrise boom attempts to introduce for instance, did not develop far enough to be a threat to design staff. One important inovation of the period was the ‘package deal’ whereby a building company undertakes to provide a certain number of dwellings, and both designs and constructs proposition for Local Authorities - particularly the smaller ones. After the highrise boom collapsed the package deal operation continued for lowrise housing, and recently there has been a noticable expansion of it. 4. NBA research was produced to show that above five floors to push their system. Concrete computer-aided design methods, them. This was an attractive construction costs did not increase markedly, even including the costs Industrial- the U.K. Use of room Hungary Large building elements in| nets W. Germany Industrial- Prefabric— ation in fo Ors|Oe3|0 24leoeS] Sell eeO|73 eee Ona QRS (rat. trad.) ~ of lifts. The supporters of high-rise industrialised building methods refered to building costs in Scandanavia and the Iron Curtain countries which appeared to show that highrise was cheaper. THE EXTENT OF THE HIGHRISE BOOM. The following statistics summarise the boom, and show comparable figures for some other European countries: eee? 1.3||12.4]16.7| 22.9]36.5]/49.7|17.9| 24.7| 27.7| 28.6| 31.3] 28.2 isedconst=|gaa logec29.6]33.9)36.8]37.8]34.0]23.4/19.8|21.7]20.2/18.8 ruction in : aged consta| 7(al s5ealo7_a)06%6 98.2/ 90.0] 88.1] 86.6] 84.3| 79.6] 80.1/82.6 ruction in E. Germany (n.b. figures include concrete blocks) esceia cece | cece) eee! eoee!| eeee/10.7/10.7/10.9/10.9/10.8/10.7| 9.4 Materials used in industrialised housing in the U.K. as Z% of total: Concrete 95.9 || -.+-|75.1] 68.8] 71.4/69.6|71.6|64.0]62.7|61.2|50.7 39.1 New houses and flats built using industrialised methods - as a Z age of all new dwellings (all figures are taken from the Annual Bulletin of Housing and Building Statistics for Europe published every year by the UN) Timber Steel 2-3 | eee-} 7-1/11.5] 9.2/12.0]/11.5/13.1]15.3|24.5|39.7155.0 Bricks 1.7 || ..--] 7.9} 7.0] 6.4] 5.4] 3.3] 6.1] 7.9] 7.8] 4.3] 4.6 coos ieeee! 9.8/12.7/12.9/13.0/13.6/16.7/14.1| 6.5| 4.3] 4.6 1963|| 1966} 1967} 1968} 1969] 1970) 1971] 1972] 1973] 1974| 1975| 1976 THE END OF THE ERA. By 1968 the boom was over, and the ending was dramatic - high-rise industrialised housing was discredited. The apparent reasons were: 1. Growing public disenchantment with high-rise housing in general. 2. Design faults and repair bills due to hastily conceived designs and lack of experience in industrialised housing. After the partial collapse of Ronan Point in 1968,300,000 examined for structural faults. : dwellings had to be 3. The Housing Subsidies Act 1967 reduced financial high-rise flats by abolishing the additional in exess of six. support for subsidy for each storey 4.The devaluation of the pound in 1967 and the cutting of £82 million from the nations expenditure on housing. 5. The Wilson government introduced a large subsidy for hotel construction which meant that many building quickly as pessible to this. REASONS FOR THE HIGH-RISE BOOM AND FOR ITS COLLAPSE. 1. Commercial. Whatever the elaborate theoretical justifications housing the real underlying motives were always commercial. Apart from the advantages already mentioned of cutting back the workforce, the building companies could share the same plant and equipment for tall offices, housing and hotels. By the early 1960s the largest companies were already tooled up for highrise operations - for office building. But in their scramble to make profits out of high-rise housing, the large building companies were 80 greedy that they failed even to produce a reasonable product. Thus the serious building recession of the early 1970s was to some extent their own fault. 2. Political. In the early 1960s the establishment took up the cause of high-rise housing with enthusiasm. There were some direct influences on governments from the building companies; for example director of Bovis, from 1964 to 1971 Geoffrey Rippon was Chairman of Cubitts, and advisors to the Minister 1965 to 1966 a director of Costains director of Concrete Ltd. (Mr K. Wood) of Quickbuild Ltd. (Mr D. Llewellyn). Also very important in influecing companies switched as in 1963 Keith Joseph was @ of Housing included from (Mr Lederer), from 1966 to 1967 a and from 1967 to 1968 a director used for high-rise the Government was the NBA, supposedly an objective scientific research body, but which acted in fact as one of the main channels through which commercial interests brought about the high-rise boom. Other sections of the establishment such as the media and University research departments also played a role in legitimising the process. Of course it was mainly through political pressures that the experiment was abandoned. In the late 1960s high-rise housing began to be a political scandal and embarragment and the establishment dropped it as quickly as it could. 3. Ideological and Theoretical. In the early 1960s all sorts of ideolgical and theoretical arguments were found to justify the construction of high-rise housing. One of the most potent was the mechanistic line of thinking which said that since it was now technologically possible to construct mlti- storey housing it was there fore inevitable scientific progrss to do so. A number of simplistic architectural theories were also trotted out. Also Britain was said to be lagging behind countries like the U.S.A. or even the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe. Incidentally, the latter remains the one part of the world where high-rise solutions have continued to supply a high proportion of new dwellings; an analysis of this is however outside the scope of this paper. 4. Operational. As mentioned above the building industry was to a certain extent already geared to multi-storey construction for its very profitable office building operations. Nevertheless serious operational problems continued throughout the high-rise boom. One basic problem was the lack of a steady and regular supply of land. Public ownership of land, such as it was, was unable to counteract the effects on land supply of the capitalist land market. Another basic problem was the way that both Government and businesses use the building industry as a 'regulator’. The cyclical booms and recessions of a capitalist economy are thus magnified in the construction sector, and one of the ways that Governments try to regulate the economy in general is through housing policy. The high-rise housing boom was also so shortlived that builders afterwards claimed that lack of time to achieve competence in this new field was the main problem. Although there was some truth in this, it assumes, wrongly, that builders were primapily interested in building good dwellings. They were not - their primary interest was and is in making profits. As it happens, this may sometimes involve good building practice. 5. Sociological. Although it is hard to believe it now, in the early 1960s sociological theories were dredged up which ‘showed" that high-rise flats were going to bring a better life, particularly for the poor. However, we can now see what the actual sociological effects have been. Whereas the idea was put forward that multi-storey estates would be wonderful new communities, we can now see that in general they are barren and unsatisfactory places to live, particularly in comparison with some of the traditional working-class neighbourhoods which they replaced. The disruption caused by this novel form of dwelling has proved to be enormous; they are particularly unsuitable for families with children. All this combined with the appalling technical faults of many estates has meant that the whole building type is now stigmatised.— for many people the very idea of living in a high flat is a fearful prospect, and many people who do live in them want nothing more than to get out. CONSEQUENCES OF THE HIGHRISE BOOM. 1. The Housing Stock. As a result of the 1960s high-rise boom there are now a large number of extremely poor and problematic dwellings. New problems with highrise flats are constantly coming to light; among these are structural problems which lead to cracks developing or even danger of collapse, condensation due to inadequate insulation, heating bills which may be as much as three times those of traditional dwellings, and cheap and badly-fitting windows or other compoments. Ratepayers are now having to pay for enormous repair bills on estates which are less than ten years old; in some cases high blocks of flats are even being demolished long before the loans with which they were built have been paid off. , 2. Employment. As observed above, one of the original ‘advantages" of highrise construction was claimed to be that more buildings could be built with less labour - both on the construction side and on the design side. Despite the meteoric and short-lived nature of the boom we can see that this did happen. Also both designers were considerably de-skilled - indeed this was one of the advantages for the employers. Despite the failure of the high-rise housing boom, both these and construction workers | changes in the quantity and in the nature of employment are still going on. This has been helped by the fact that the building unions have been comparatively fragmented and ineffectual, and building design staff have been, until recently, hardly unionised at all. INDUSTRIALISATION NOW AND IN THE FUTURE. About 20% of new housing is still being constructed using industrialised methods, but these days it is low-rise. The attractions to the building companies are the same as they were for high-rise. Most of the new low-rise industrialised systems use timber, and TRADA (Timber Research and Development Association) is performing a similar role in advocating these to that which the NBA performed in advocating high-rise industrialised methods in the 1960s, TRADA is partly funded by private construction companies. Another fact to note is that one low-rise syatem, Wimpey No-fines, has over the last few years accounted for over 20% of industrially built new public sector housing. Trade unionists in the building industry must keep a careful watch on these activities. Finally it must be pointed out that industrialisation in the construction industry is not necessarily a bad thing. But the criterion to decide whether the introduction of new technology is a good thing should be social need, and the pattern of employment should be taken into account as part of this. In the past this has not happened. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Building Design Staff, London Branch of AUEW-TASS Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Andrew Brown Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource post June 1977